Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2024 – Konpira-san and Noodles

Last night I returned from a two-day excursion to Naoshima, one of Japan's so-called "art islands" in Kagawa Prefecture, a two-hour drive to the east from my wife's home island of Iyo-Oshima, with a stop at Konpira-san, a famous shrine known for its hilltop position requiring a climb of 764 steps to the top – sort of. Once at the top, a small sign notes that a smaller, associated shrine sits up by another 400 steps or so. Once there, another discreet sign informs the intrepid of yet another shrine at the very top requiring the mounting of another couple hundred stairs – 1,368 in all. I rarely look at the health apps built in to my iPhone, but the activity piqued my curiosity. According to the phone, the climb was the equivalent of walking to the top of a 62-storey building. 

The first third of the route is lined with souvenir shops. Higher up, the stairs are flanked by stone lanterns and a seemingly endless row of stone steles carved with the names of companies and individuals that have contributed to the shrine over the years, complete with the amounts donated. Cherry trees were coming in to bloom at the shrine, as they are everywhere. Mountain cherries emerging as clouds of pale pink from a background of leafless trees on the hillsides are particularly pretty. It's only at this time of year that their presence is obvious. The rows of cherry trees planted deliberately at shrines and temples, in parks, and along roads are easier to spot when not in bloom. After a night at an attractive little inn called Gamou-ya in the town of Sakaide, we headed for Naoshima.

Kagawa Prefecture might as well be called Udon Prefecture. Shops offering the fat, slick wheat noodles, are everywhere – for consumption on the premises or to take away for preparation at home. The climate in Kagawa Prefecture is said to be good for growing wheat (and we saw many winter wheat fields). The soft local water is supposed to be good for preparing the noodles. Udon would not have been my first choice for breakfast, but the proprietor of Gamou-ya recommended we try a noodle shop a couple of minutes away on foot before departing for the ferry terminal for the trip to Naoshima. When I questioned the idea of noodles for breakfast, he assured me it was the thing to do. 

There was already a line at the shop when we arrived and it had grown to about 70 people by the time we left, but it moved quickly. ¥180 (today about $1.20) buys you a bowl of noodles which you take to a table laid out with all kinds of tempura to choose from (¥120, or about $0.80, a piece). I added a slice of pumpkin tempura and a slice of eggplant to my bowl and from there stepped to a cauldron of hot broth that I ladled onto the noodles and tempura. I topped it off with a spoonful of chopped green onions. The shop is tiny, with barely enough room to complete the course, but the customers navigated it all with ease, as if they'd done it many times – and no doubt they had. A bowl of noodles turned out to be a tasty and filling way to start the day for a mere $2.80 or so. An unusually strong dollar (a dollar buys ¥150 at the moment) makes a lot of things here seem cheap.

I photographed a Pale Thrush (Turdus pallidus, another addition to my life list) on the way up to the shrines above Konpira-san.